A Lokpal, finally
Appointing Justice Ghose is only the first step
Fifty-six years after it was first proposed and more than five years after the President signed the fiercely contentious Lokpal Bill into law, the National Democratic Alliance has finally got round to appointing a Lokpal. The move must be welcomed as a milestone in the cause of fighting corruption in high places. But for a government that had made anti-corruption a crusading platform in 2014, and leveraged it for an unprecedented exercise in demonetisation in 2016, this move at the fag end of its term is curious. The initial reason offered for this deferral was that the selection committee required a member of the Opposition, and no party had the requisite 10 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats to qualify. The government could, however, have adopted a precedent from the CBI Act, which allowed an invitation to the leader of the single-largest party to be part of the selection committee for the appointment of the chief of the investigative unit. To ask the leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha to attend as “special invitee” without decision-making powers amounted to no real solution, which is perhaps why Mallikarjun Kharge chose to sit this out. It is a decision fraught with potential problems once the next government is sworn in.
Still, in Justice P C Ghose, who has a track record for impartial judgments concerning politicians of all hues during his Supreme Court stint, the selection committee appears to have made an unexceptionable choice. Justice Ghose is remembered for being part of the two-member Bench that held Jayalalithaa and her associate Ms Sasikala guilty of misusing public office to enrich themselves. He was also part of the two-member Bench that directed a trial court to frame charges against several Bharatiya Janata Party stalwarts for the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
The principal issues are two. First, appointing other members, who will be appointed by the same procedure as the Lokpal. The law provides for up to eight members, half of whom should be from a judicial background. Half the members must be people belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward castes, minorities and women. If these conditions are challenging, they are heightened by the fact that the same rules apply for the search committee for these members. Setting up enquiry and prosecuting wings will also be timeconsuming, and given the inherently controversial nature of such posts plus the turmoil of impending elections, the Lokpal is unlikely to be a functioning entity anytime soon. The second challenge concerns institutional independence. From the Supreme Court to the Election Commission, institutional respect has not been a strong point for most regimes, including the current one. The CBI, famously described as a “caged parrot”, offered a bizarre public spectacle of this erosion following a controversy involving its director and his deputy.
It is the moral authority of the Lokpal and its members that matters most. For instance, the Act covers most public servants, including the prime minister. One critical point of contention is the exclusions for prime ministerial scrutiny — on grounds of international relations, external and internal security, public order, atomic energy and space. These can be as widely or narrowly interpreted as the Lokpal chooses. India’s increasing engagement with the global economy demands that the Lokpal should hold itself to a higher standard, abjure inevitable political pressures and evolve into an institution that commands universal respect.